


Excavation

by smilebackwards



Category: Captain America (2011), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Huddling For Warmth, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-21
Updated: 2012-04-21
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:13:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony doesn't know how you tell someone that they should be dead, that they're in the future, but he's not about to let Steve survive fifty five years of rudimentary cryogenic freezing only to die of hypothermic shock five minutes after the thaw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Excavation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlackEyedGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/gifts).



Since Tony turned twenty five, his father has visited him approximately once every six months to poke around his workshop and make discouraging noises.

Tony's had seven years to get used to it, so it no longer registers as such an agonizing, heart-shredding experience. Tony has real shrapnel reaching for his heart nowadays. Still, when his father picks up a scale model for the top secret satellite NASA begged him to design and puts it down five seconds later, moves on to peer dispassionately at the newest gauntlets for the suit Tony's carefully assembling, there's a certain stinging.

Tony's workshop is all odds and ends, circuits stacked on gears stacked on sheet metal. There are rusted-out spark igniters on the workbench, curls of copper shavings on the floor, an oxygen tank chained to a pillar.

Ocean mapping software, projecting trenches and rock spires around the simulated wreckage of the Lusitania and casting a green glow on Howard's suddenly arrested face, is stacked on an old shield, the center an aborted star, that Tony found tucked away in a box he hadn't meant to transport between New York and Malibu. The box had said Captain America on the side and he'd thought it must be his old comic collection, his action figures and posters, but when he'd finally cracked it open two years ago there had only been age-darkened photographs full of people he didn't know, a few loose papers with strings of chemical markers—red-stamped with an eagle, wings outstretched, SSR pressed into it's breastbone—and the shield.

"Tony," Howard says, his voice oddly trembling, "What is this?"

Tony shrugs. "Yeah, I think that might be yours. Sorry." 

The shield has migrated around Tony's workshop, doubling as a doorstop and a cutting surface, used for target practice, and once almost melted down to be repurposed as conductive coating on a grounding rod. Tony had spent a full five minutes going at it with a blowtorch while it refused to so much as warp, let alone melt.

"No, not the...not the shield," Howard says. "This." He runs a hand through the green hologram, fingers reaching futilely for the lost Lusitania.

Tony programmed the mapping software in an Oceanography course he'd taken at MIT for a required biology credit. The professor had called him the Engineering School's one trick pony and he'd gotten revenge by designing the best hydrography tool on the planet, presenting it to the class while Dr. Kalper looked on, salivating, and then declining to sell it on the open market. He hasn't touched it in years. The only reason it's out at all is because Tony shorted out every light in the workshop last week and he'd needed the glow of the hologram to work by as he finished soldering the soles of his rocket boots.

"It's mapping software," Tony says, cautious. "For hydrography. It uses a sonar array to measure depth and topography then projects a three-dimensional display. I've still got the array around here somewhere."

"I'd like to borrow it," Howard says, eyes alight and distant, like Cassiopeia in summer. "Please."

\--

They find the wreckage in the Arctic, latitude 67° N, almost on level with Reykjavík in Iceland. 

After the laser burns through the crust of the glacier, Howard and Tony rappel down into the guts of the German bomber. It's dark and close, cloudy ice six inches thick on all the metal struts and making the deck slippery and treacherous. 

There's a glint of red among all the white blue of the ice and Howard kneels down to brush snow away from a round, starred shield, hands shaking with cold. "This is the real one," he tells Tony, quiet. "Vibranium. The one in your workshop is just made from what was left after the refining, impure. This is the one I made for..."

He trails off and Tony sucks in a breath, following his gaze along the ground. There are two short projections jutting out of the otherwise smooth surface of the ice, forefinger and thumb, and when Howard gently clears the covering snow, Tony can see the rest of the outline of a human hand.

Howard pulls off his gloves and rests his fingertips against the ice. "Hi, Steve," he says.

\--

Howard climbs out of the bomber so he can call that asshole Fury on the sat phone and lower down the excavation equipment. 

Tony watches the ice melt carefully away, drip by drip. The burning red coils of the radiators make softly angry humming noises and Steve Rogers slowly emerges from the ice, hand, arm, shoulder, until Tony can see his face. Steve has sharp, fine features, a mouth that still blushes red, almost like he's alive. 

Steve Rogers is encased in ice like a glass coffin, his face washed pale, lips blood-red. Tony was always more for Green Lantern or, well, Captain America, but he still knows this story. All it should take is a kiss.

Tony leans down, touches his lips to Steve's, chaste in a way he's almost forgotten.

Steve's eyes snap open and his body wracks with a shiver, intense as a seizure. Tony staggers back automatically. "Jesus Christ!"

Steve struggles against the thin layer of still-melting ice over his legs, shifting until it cracks away. "W-What happened? Where are we?" he asks. His teeth clack together loudly in the echo chamber of the plane's interior, chattering, and he gives another full-body shudder.

Tony doesn't know how you tell someone that they should be dead, that they're in the future, but he's not about to let Steve survive fifty five years of rudimentary cryogenic freezing only to die of hypothermic shock five minutes after the thaw. "Hey," Tony says. "Hey, Steve, you're okay. Let me just get this off you." 

"Howard?" Steve asks, blinking, as Tony maneuvers him into a sitting position and peels off his sodden uniform shirt.

"Wrong Stark," Tony says. "I'm Tony. You should probably know that because we're about to get pretty close and personal here in the pursuit of keeping you alive. Holy shit, how are you alive?" He starts stripping off the seven hundred layers of thermal turtlenecks and sweaters and anorak coats he'd made Pepper buy for him before starting on this insane expedition.

"I don't know," Steve says. "I crashed."

One final flannel undershirt and Tony's down to just his bare chest. There's a moment of intense awkwardness as he stares at Steve's six pack abs and says, "Um. Body heat."

"Oh. Thanks," Steve says, scooting against Tony and wrapping icy arms around his shoulders. Tony shivers. "Sorry," Steve says, starting to pull away.

"No," Tony says, reeling Steve back in and pressing his hands around the curves of Steve's waist, pushing in heat. "It's fine."

"Nice to meet you, Tony," Steve says, his breath warm against Tony's ear.

"Yeah," Tony says, swallowing. "Yeah, you too."


End file.
